UK

Children belong at school: an idea that has taken 69 years to catch on

If the Government fulfils its ambition to raise the leaving age to 18 by 2013, the policy will have taken 69 years from proposal to reality. Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, said that it was “incredible” that Britain was only now trying to enact the postwar settlement on education outlined by the Conservative minister Rab Butler in 1944.

Historically, raising the leaving age has been fraught with difficulties. Education was made compulsory after Victorian campaigns against child labour. Ever since then, governments have wanted to increase the upper limit. But the difficulties and costs of expanding compulsory education have repeatedly forced governments to scale back their ambitions.

The challenge for Mr Johnson and Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, is to ensure that the problems of the past are not repeated.

A third of a million places will have to be created in schools and colleges. The ministers know that they must tread with caution, and ensure that all the pieces are in place before making the change. This will take at least six years.

The issue is close to both men’s hearts. Both of them left school at an early age, for entirely different reasons.  Mr Johnson left at 15 without qualifications to work, while the precocious Chancellor left at 16 for university.

Compulsory education was introduced on a piecemeal basis in 1870, after the novels of Charles Dickens, one of the cause’s foremost champions, shocked Victorians by exposing the extreme working conditions of child chimneysweeps. Dickens, who was traumatised by being sent to work in a blacking factory as a child, never lived to see the reforms for which he had campaigned, dying the year that they were introduced. Education was finally made compulsory for all children aged 5 to 10 in 1880, despite opposition from poor families desperate to boost the household income by sending their children to work. It was enforced by an army of “attendence officers”, ensuring that children were where they should be.

However, as the system became accepted, the leaving age was gradually edged up. In 1893, the age was increased to 11 and then to 12 in 1899. After the First World War, it was increased to 14 by the Fisher Act.

It was then that the problems of raising the leaving age really started. From first proposal to enactment, it took 21 years to raise the leaving age from 14 to 15. In 1926, Baldwin’s Conservative government recommended raising the leaving age, but the legislation was defeated in Parliament because of fears about the consequences. A second attempt to raise the age finally succeeded in 1939, only to be stymied by the outbreak of the Second World War.

As the war drew to a close, thinking had already moved on, and Butler outlined proposals to raise the age to 18, starting with a first step to 15 then to 16 “as soon as it was practicable”. In the event, the 1944 Education Act didn’t raise the leaving age to 15 until April 1947. The idea of raising it to 16 was dropped, then revived in 1959. However, a whole series of obstacles ensured that it was not raised to 16 until 1972, a full quarter of a century after it was raised to 15. It had been scheduled for 1968, but many schools did not have the capacity. Self- assembly buildings had to be delivered to provide extra accommodation. Some authorities founded Middle Schools so that secondary school numbers could stay static.

However, by the mid-1960s it became clear that the target could not be met. Harold Wilson’s Labour government was facing a series of financial crises and was forced to take drastic steps to balance the books. The schools issue provided an obvious cutback and in 1968 Lord Longford, then Lord Privy Seal, resigned over the debacle. Once the economy picked up the project was revived and the change enacted. In 1997 this was tweaked to give a single leaving date of the last Friday in June of the school year that the pupil reaches the age of 16.

Keeping pupils in education for longer fits in with the global trend. In 1998 Hungary changed the law to require pupils to be schooled until 18, bringing it into line with Germany. Italy and certain states in the US and Australia are also in the process of raising the age.

Sarah Birke and Anthony Browne
 12 January 2007

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2543472,00.html

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